INFO 370 - L14 - November 16, 2004
Notes By: Prins, Egaas, Podhola, Fortier, Yaptinchay

Interactions

To Review...
To Design an Informaiton System
    > Get Ready
        - Define the purpose of the system (triple)
        - Define the users (persona)
        - Define the must and could's (requirements)
    > Design the info
        - Subject matter (IA)
        - Info structure (content modeling)
    > Design the Interactions
        - What has to be done? (Tasks/activities)
        - **What is the flow? (interactions)**
    > Design the UI
        - Put together screens (prototyping)
        - Test it (usability)

* Best answer of the year.

Interaction Design
    > What are the essentials?
    > Getting there from tasks
    > Getting the user through and interaction
        - navigating in a building
        - sign posts on a road
    > Making design tradeoffs

The essentials of interaction (conversation?) design
    ?: Why would I call this conversation design?
        - meaning through communication between user and system
        - the instantaneous message (example: quick glance of a website)
    > Tell the user (and listening of course)
        - Where they are
            * Current status
            * What comes next
            * Where is the end
            * Undo (be able to backtrack without any costs)
        - What just happened
            * Feedback
            * Error recovery
    > How your way relates to theirs
            * Accounting for divergent goals
            * Leveraging the user's conceptual model
                - difference in conceptual model, ex. policies v. requirements
            * Defaults
                - a default does 2 things.
                    - A default provides orientation. Tells people what the mainstream is.
                    - Also, makes things faster.

Tasks vs. Interactions
    > A task is a unit that the *user sees as a single step* in a larger journey toward a goal
    > An interaction is a set of tasks that you string together to get the user to a goal (user plus system)
        * consists of sub-steps

Getting the user through an interaction
    > How do we know what to do next?
        * Class tries to guess..
            - Past example of the importance of documentation on GUI-less systems
            - Computer = machine metaphor (see buttons).. not like today's book metaphor
        * Trial and error during use
        * Learning before use
        * Following the logic of the metaphor
            - every metaphor is logical
        * Following the affordances

Design tradeoffs | Design "knobs" work for interactions too
    > Power vs. Ease of Learning 
        * ex. Word vs. Notepad, Manual v. Automatic cars
        * cannot have both! don't listen to the lies!
    > Features for all tasks vs. most important tasks
    > Features for beginners vs. experts
        * ex. hidden features in Word menus
    > Virtual vs. physical features
    > Standardized vs. specialized features

Figuring out interactions
    > Flow charting
    > Use cases
    > Site paths

Task analysis vs. interaction analysis
TA: Good for coming up with the granularity of a task down to the user's level
IA: ***

Use Case
* LOOK AT SLIDE *

Site Path Diagrams
    > Entry states
        - Information need
        - Attitudes (in a hurry, anxious, conused, etc)
    > Exit state
        - Info need satisfied
        - Attitude adjusted
    > In between
        - A system/user conversation
        - A set of activities
        - A progress through the system
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